On a rainy day in 1850 the police found an angry and disoriented woman on the streets of New York. The girl spoke to them in a foreign language that they couldn’t understand.She was taken to a hospital where she was diagnosed with amnesia.And she was identified as Adele Hugo, daughter of the famous writer Victor Hugo, author of “Los Miserables”.The woman’s story not only broke her father’s heart but the whole world. After learning that Adele fell in love with an English soldier named Albert Pinson, who rejected her.He traveled and she followed him to Nova Scotia, where the man lived for years manipulating and taking money from Adele, until he finally left her with no money, no friends and devastated in New York City.Adele was returned to France but was devastated in every aspect, felt humiliated and vowed never to speak again.Her father Victor Hugo tried for a space of 35 years to induce her to break that oath. But their efforts were in vain.For a span of 65 years, from 1850 until her death in 1915 Adele “Miserable” never spoke or uttered a word again.It is considered the longest self-imposed silence in history.
